Recently I’ve discovered the joy of CRPGs, having previously only dabbled in them without spending any significant time on the genre.
With Baldur’s Gate 2 just around the corner, which I’m sure many of us are hyped for, I wanted to try a similar CRPG to get a feel for whether I’m going to want to play it. Enter DOS2; this game is made by Larian Studios, the same studio making BG2, and is an absolutely incredible game.
From the graphics, which are stunning even 6 years on from release, to the combat which makes you think about your moves in a manner similar to how you might do in a game like chess, and best of all stories which are for the most part genuinely interesting. I frequently found myself surprised at events / characters / quests I found throughout the world, even small things like hearing someone screaming nearby then discovering they had been torn to pieces by voidwoken.
I recently just finished Act I and just started Act II but wanted to share a bit of love for this game as it is an absolute masterpiece with a well deserved 95% positive rating with 144k reviews on steam.
Please share your experience with DOS2 and whether or not you have fully completed the game!
One of my favourite games and the only reason I purchased the Early Access of Baldura Gate 3.
Wish I could play it for the first time again. Have fun!:)
Same here
DOS 1 is also good but obviously the second one is better
I wanted to like this game but I found the combat to be really tedious and the story felt dull. I hope BG3 takes it to another level.
It’s great but too big and sprawling for me. I got drowned in side AND main quests in the second act and couldn’t get back into it. Probably a me problem but still.
The single big complaint about DoS2 I have is the horribly dysfunktional quest journal. Instead of giving the player a sense of what to do and where to go next, it just outright confuses me and makes me feel super lost. That quests don´t have a recommended character level makes this mess even worse. I worked around those issues by using Quests by Levels Guide and it worked very well - never felt lost again, always knew what quest to do next.
Thank you, that looks great. Might help me back into the game.
I’m one of those who doesn’t get the praise.
It’s probably just me, but I’ve always felt like if you’re not going to hold the player’s hand, then it’s important to be intuitive. DOS2…is anything BUT intuitive; not only is the game open-ended, the way forward isn’t always clear. Some early fights are difficult enough that you might assume it’s a beef gate, when it’s actually required to proceed and you just need to cheese it.
For me, it might be because the RPG mechanics aren’t familiar to me. I picked up Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous and fuckin’ loved both of those games, but Pathfinder is a game system I’m familiar with. Maybe since Baldur’s Gate 3 uses a variant of 5th edition D&D, it’ll click for me.
I share your opinion about DoS2 being not intuitive and also not holding hands. I also agree that the way “forward” is often unclear when relying on the built in dysfunktional quest journal. However I disagree with your statement that there would be fights that you have to cheese to win in DoS2. The game seems to promote cheesing but it does also not require it.
I feel the exact same way you do about DOS2. I switched to an easier difficulty soon enough. Baldur’s Gate 3 feels like I finally get to be a player as a forever-DM, but also makes me feel like scolding the non-existent DM for some stupid encounter and quest design. I play with a full party of friends, so maybe it’s because we fuck around too much.
That said, it is early access. Hopefully the final product has better intuition so that you don’t have to save-reload all the damn time because you didn’t mindread the devs.
I liked the game but I was a bit disappointed that nearly every fight ends up with everything covered in necrofire. I bet that if you were to just spec into a build that likes being on fire you’ll probably be super overpowered.
The problem is that loot is random, and it takes a lot of gear support to get to the point where a character isn’t getting hurt by fire, even with the relevant perk.
Cursed surfaces in general were just a massive pain, considering how precious Source was by default. Using a mod to get Source back on rest makes things a lot more reasonable, particularly in the first half of the game.
I liked the first game more. The introduction of armour bars in DOS2 made each fight a huge slog; I understand the intention of promoting strategic thinking, but it just felt un-fun to me. Also, I liked the light hearted nature of DOS1’s story more.
For me it was the other way around, I liked the combat in 2 a lot more, because 1 felt way more random. In DOS2, status effects are more predictable, in 1 you can get really lucky or unlucky with status effects hitting or missing, leading to more reloading and “save-scumming” (or maybe we were just bad lol)
I haven’t played a lot of games like this but from all of the games I’ve played in the past 20-ish years, this one shot up to near the top of my list. I must have dropped at least 200 hours on this game on my first playthrough, just appreciating every little detail there was and doing all of the side quests.
The gameplay itself is already amazing, but to me what really shone was the brilliant, brilliant writing. I have never read such intensely hued writing in a video game.
Only problem I have with the series is that the average battle takes around half an hour. Wish there was a way to speed that up. But fun games with awesome graphics no doubt.
I typically play video games for an hour a night. This can be woefully inadequate for DoS as all I may accomplish is a single battle.
I think the only dumb reason I stopped playing after 25 hours was just not having a convenient storage chest as I tend to be a hoarder in games.
I even went as far as figuring out how to make a mod to improve the storage chest.
My thought was to see if I could edit the ship’s chest to show a bigger screen of items and have either tabs or separaters for the name type.
Now that you say it. Item management is my second big complaint about DoS2 - right after the nearly useless quest journal - it is truly horrible and the “improved organization” gift bag sadly does not fix the problem but makes it even worse imo.
Yeah, I just finished the game, and inventory management was probably my number one gripe. Hours were spent micromanaging all the luggage. I had the same experience with the gift bag. If I had it to do over, I’d go Lone Wolf, just to simplify the logistics.
This is a game for which the developers said “you have to cheese it, we made it that way intentionally”.
You have to do fights trying to cheese it as much as possible, guess the correct order based on your level as well and often end up in situations that are impossible to resolve unless you do something that doesn’t make sense.
And let’s not forget the “kill everything that moves to get the most xp possible” because that’s the way it’s intended to be played.
If it was just a straight up “combat - cutscene - combat” I would agree with the “great game” opinion because the game only shines for the combat system.
Everything else is below average when not straight out broken.
Quite slow paced and inventory management is a mess, but a very good game otherwise!
I heavily recommend the Explorer difficulty if you aren’t familiar with CRPGs, on Classic the game is quite hard even in Act 1 if you don’t know how to play them.
I could never get into it, tbh.
Me and my partner at the time figured it’d be amazing for a couch-co-op thing, but it was so chaotic around NPCs due to the spam of random interactions flying off from two interacting characters, we just gave up on it. Breaking combat was a lot of fun though.
I really ought to get back into it and just play it solo. 🤔
I think my most uttered phrase during couch co-op was «opps, sorry!» as I electrified/curse fired yet another surface by accident.
I wish I would love it. It is a really great game but I cannot make it click for me. Looks great, sounds great, feels great.
But somehow it doesn’t work for me. Half the time I feel I have no control and have no idea of how to get it, other half I’m steamrolling things. Worst part is winning fights and it feeling undeserved, like a sloppy brawl.
Still a great game.
I love CRPGs and was excited when I got recommended this game - it got a lot of praise. Unfortunately, I found it to be tedious and overall uninteresting. That wouldn’t be worth mentioning if this game wasn’t on every top-rpgs-of-all-time list… I honestly don’t get it and I am confused.
Personal taste is always a factor. I’m curious, though - which CRPGs do you consider less tedious/more interesting?
@Taliesin @solidstate Legend of Grimrock has its moments.
I enjoyed both Baldur’s Gates, Planescape Torment, Pillars of Eternity, Arcanum, Gothic, I don’t know, pretty much RPGs across the board I think.
That’s a solid list, though I’m surprised to see Pillars up there. Gave both 1 and 2 really serious tries, tens of hours each, and just couldn’t get through them. Flat characters and uninspired world, I felt. I even like Critical Role but found their performance in PoE2 phoned in.
Yes I put it there to point out that I enjoyed even more mediocre games like Pillars more than Divinity. Thus my confusion.
I want to go back to this game so bad. I played for about 15 hours and loved it but got distracted with something else. Ive tried to start over a couple of times but I just can’t get into it again in the same way. Once I’ve finished Pikmin 4 I might try again.
Do it - it is absolutely worth it
